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Full Discussion: Sticky Bit
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Sticky Bit Post 302354171 by methyl on Thursday 17th of September 2009 10:15:14 AM
Old 09-17-2009
See "man 2 chmod" for an explanation of the sticky bit on individual files. It's more about caching than permissions.


The sticky bit does have a use for directories in some O/S.
Code:
mkdir mydir
chmod 1770 mydir
chown myuser:mygroup mydir
cd mydir
touch myfile
chmod 640 myfile
chown myuser:mygroup myfile

The file myfile can be read by anyone in mygroup but the sticky bit on the directory stops them deleting the file with error "not owner".
Try it. Not all O/S behave the same way.


A less complicated way to protect a file is to own the directory and the file and only allow write access to yourself. In this example users in your group can see the file and its contents but not make changes.
Code:
mkdir mydir
chown myuser:mygroup mydir
chmod 750 mydir
cd mydir
touch myfile
chmod 640 myfile
chown myuser:mygroup myfile


Last edited by methyl; 09-17-2009 at 11:18 AM.. Reason: layout - was too wide
 

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CHMOD(1)						      General Commands Manual							  CHMOD(1)

NAME
chmod - change mode SYNOPSIS
chmod [ -Rf ] mode file ... DESCRIPTION
The mode of each named file is changed according to mode, which may be absolute or symbolic. An absolute mode is an octal number con- structed from the OR of the following modes: 4000 set user ID on execution 2000 set group ID on execution 1000 sticky bit, see chmod(2) 0400 read by owner 0200 write by owner 0100 execute (search in directory) by owner 0070 read, write, execute (search) by group 0007 read, write, execute (search) by others A symbolic mode has the form: [who] op permission [op permission] ... The who part is a combination of the letters u (for user's permissions), g (group) and o (other). The letter a stands for all, or ugo. If who is omitted, the default is a but the setting of the file creation mask (see umask(2)) is taken into account. Op can be + to add permission to the file's mode, - to take away permission and = to assign permission absolutely (all other bits will be reset). Permission is any combination of the letters r (read), w (write), x (execute), X (set execute only if file is a directory or some other execute bit is set), s (set owner or group id) and t (save text - sticky). Letters u, g, or o indicate that permission is to be taken from the current mode. Omitting permission is only useful with = to take away all permissions. When the -R option is given, chmod recursively descends its directory arguments setting the mode for each file as described above. When symbolic links are encountered, their mode is not changed and they are not traversed. If the -f option is given, chmod will not complain if it fails to change the mode on a file. EXAMPLES
The first example denies write permission to others, the second makes a file executable by all if it is executable by anyone: chmod o-w file chmod +X file Multiple symbolic modes separated by commas may be given. Operations are performed in the order specified. The letter s is only useful with u or g. Only the owner of a file (or the super-user) may change its mode. SEE ALSO
ls(1), chmod(2), stat(2), umask(2), chown(8) 7th Edition May 22, 1986 CHMOD(1)
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